Book Review
Title: Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers
Author: Alyssa Wong
Genre: Horror
Rating: ****
Review: So, I read another short story/novella published in this magazine for the last Demonathon and I ended up really enjoying it so I was excited to see what this one had in store for me. This one didn’t have the audio narration that the other story had which I was a little disappointed by but the story itself was dark, gritty and I absolutely loved it. The only downside for me was it seemed a little rushed and could have benefitted from being a little longer so one or two things could have been expanded or explained a little better.
From what I could gather of the story, Jenny like her mother had the abilities to sense the thoughts of the people around her but these thoughts and the people attached to them have smells and tastes too. Whatever creatures Jenny is, she has the power to suck these thoughts out of people and feed off them which also allows her to temporarily assume that person’s shape. We see this in full effect in the opening scene as Jenny is on a date with Harvey as he thinks about killing her only for her to drain him of his essence. However, this has a negative effect on Jenny as Harvey is more delicious than anyone else, she has consumed and those lowly people don’t taste good to her anymore. Desperate she reaches out to her mother who explains that since Jenny has consumed a killer nothing less than that will satisfy her anymore and encourages her to move home which Jenny doesn’t want to do as her mother is stuck living in the past especially since she accidently killed her husband, Jenny’s father by draining him of his essence. Jenny also has this struggle with her best friend, Aiko who smells so appealing to her but she has to restrain herself from hurting her best friend.
Jenny soon comes across Seo-yun on a dating app and senses the malice in her, on their first date she tries to consume Seo-yun only to learn that they have the same ability and she takes Jenny under her wing to learn a new way of living. This suits Jenny just fine who is feeling better than ever and moves in with Seo-yun just over two months later. At one of the dinner parties, they regularly hold Jenny learns that Aiko is there are a caterer but when she discovers Seo-yun feeding of Aiko she is enraged. To protect her friend, she consumed Seo-yun which makes her feel really ill but Seo-yun has consumed too much of Aiko’s essence. When Jenny vomits up Seo-yun’s essence she has to tear through every part of her searching for the piece of Aiko she consumed and that’s where the story ends. As you can probably gather by this review the story is a little confusing and hard to piece together which is why I felt it needed to be a little longer but from what I do understand the implications of this ability are amazing and horrifying in equal measures and I hope Alyssa Wong comes out with a novel at some point in the future because I would definitely read it.
Buy it here
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